Faces

Face perception is the process by which the brain and mind understand and interpret the face, particularly the human face.

The face is an important site for the identification of others and conveys significant social information. Probably because of the importance of its role in social interaction, psychological processes involved in face perception are known to be present from birth, to be complex, and to involve large and widely distributed areas in the brain. These parts of the brain can be damaged to cause a specific impairment in understanding faces known as prosopagnosia.

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2 Replies to “Faces”

i just saw a really interesting documentary about vision and perception. There was a guy who could recognize anything EXCEPT FACES… and another who could recognize faces, but NOTHING ELSE. He knew his wife, friends, himself when he saw them, but couldn’t tell you what a brush was or an old 45 rpm record by looking at it. He could describe it in detail, but couldn’t tell you what it was. “It’s flat, it’s a disc… I don’t know” …then, when he touched it and felt the grooves he guessed it was a record- but by recognizing it with sense of touch, not by what it looked like. He couldn’t tell grass from water, had no idea if trees were trees or something else… he could made broad assumptions, but didn’t really know.
The other guy… he couldn’t recognize his wife, his friends, or even his own face in a mirror, no matter how many times he saw them. It was like everyone was always a stranger. Apparently the part of the brian that recognizes faces is totally different from the part that recognizes absolutely everything else. Pretty amazing!